[extropy-chat] 'a process of non-thinking called faith' 2 (2)

[Lee Corbin]

Jeff writes

> Islam has been on the defense, legitimately so, against western
> aggression, domination and expansion for a long time.

What about the entire history since 632. They've changed
much less than we have in the interval. In most instances
(except the Balkans) that Moslem armies conquered, the
native religion and culture got stamped out.

> The most recent spasm of western aggression beginning in Nov of
> 1917 and continuing with substantial ferocity to this day.

But it's NOTHING LIKE their successful aggressions. Lebanon used
to be a Christian country, as recently as the 1950's or 1960's. 

Look, the only reason that Moslem armies were able to overrun
Spain in 711 (or the reason that Spanish armies eventually won it
back---a slow process taking 800 years), was that their armies
were stronger.

The contest between the west and Islam---raging on for so many
centuries culminating in the near loss of Vienna on two occasions
separated by 150 years or so---has been strangely quiet the last
two hundred years. The reason for this is absolutely overwhelming
Western military superiority.  What grounds do you have for thinking
that *their* behavior would be any different than it was, were only
the military positions reversed?

When the British and French assumed political control over the
middle-east, why was the Muslim culture left untouched? Why
didn't the west do the same thing to the middle east that it had
done centuries earlier to North America?

Lee